The Workers’ Party and the Peasantry[2]

Written:Written in February 1901Published:Published in April 1901 inIskra, No. 3.

      Published according to theIskratext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1964,

      Moscow,Volume 4,

      pages420-428.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.Other Formats:Text•README

Fortyyears have passed since the peasants were emancipated. It is quite
      natural that the public should celebrate with particular enthusiasm
      February 19, the anniversary of the fall of old feudal Russia and the
      beginning of an epoch which promised the people liberty and
      prosperity. But we must not forget that besides genuine loathing of
      serfdom and all its manifestations, there is also much unctuousness in the
      laudatory orations delivered on the occasion. The now fashionable
      estimation of the “great” Reform as “the emancipation of
      the peasantry accompanied by a grant of landwith the aidof
      state compensation” is utterly hypocritical and false. Actually, the
      peasants were emancipatedfromthe land, inasmuch as the plots
      they had tilled for centuries were ruthlessly cut down and hundreds of
      thousands of peasants were deprived of all their land and settled on a
      quarter or beggar’s

      allotment.[3]In point of fact, the peasants were
      doubly robbed: not only were their plots of land cut down, but they had to
      pay “redemption money” for the land left to them, and which
      had always been in their possession; the redemption price, moreover, was
      far above the actual value of the land. Ten years after the emancipation
      of the peasantry the landlords themselves admitted to government officials
      investigating the state of agriculture that the peasants had been made to
      pay, not only for their land, but for their personal liberty. Yet,
      although the peasants had to pay redemption money for their liberation,
      they were not granted real freedom; for twenty years they remained
      “temporarily

      bound”[4];
      they were left—and have remained to
      this day—the lowest social-estate, subject to flogging;liable to special taxes; bereft of the right freely to leave the
      semi-feudal commune, freely to dispose of their own land, or freely to
      settle in any part of the country. Our peasant Reform, far from
      manifesting magnanimity of the government, on the contrary, serves as a
      great historical example of the extent to which the autocratic government
      befouls everything it touches. Under pressure of military defeat,
      appalling financial difficulties, and menacing discontent among the
      peasantry, the government was actuallycompelledto liberate the
      peasants. The tsar himself admitted that the peasants had to be
      emancipated from above, lest they emancipate themselves from below. But in
      embarking on emancipation, the government did everything possible and
      impossible to satisfy the greed of the “injured” serf-owners;
      it did not even stop at the base device of reshuffling the men who were to
      carry out the Reform, although the men selected had come from among the
      nobility itself!  The first body of mediators was dissolved and replaced
      by men incapable of refusing to help the serf-owners cheat the peasantry
      in the very process of demarcating the land. Nor could the great Reform be
      carried out with out resort to military punitive action and the
      shooting-down of peasants who refused to accept the title-deeds to the

      land.[5]It is not surprising, therefore, that the best men of the time,
      muzzled by the censors, met this great Reform with the silence of
      condemnation.

Thepeasant, “emancipated” from corvée service, emerged
      from the hands of the reformers crushed, plundered, degraded, tied to his
      allotment, so much so that he had no alternative but
      “voluntarily” to accept corvée services. And so he
      began to cultivate the land of his former master, “renting” from him
      the very land that had been cut off from his own allotment, hiring himself
      out in the winter for summer work in return for the corn he had to borrow
      from the landlord to feed his hungry family. The “free labour,” for
      which the manifesto drawn up by a jesuitical priest called upon the
      peasantry to ask the “blessing of God,” turned out to be nothing
      more nor less than labour-service and bondage.

Tooppression by the landlords, which was preserved thanks to the
      magnanimity of the officials who introducedand carried out the Reform, was added oppression by capital. The power of
      money, which crushed even the French peasant, emancipated from the power
      of the feudal landlords, not by a miserable, half-hearted reform, but by a
      mighty popular revolution—this power of money bore down with all its
      weight upon our semi-serf muzhik. He had to obtain money at all
      costs—in order to pay the taxes which had increased as a result of
      the beneficent Reform, to rent land, to buy the few miserable articles of
      factory-made goods which began to squeeze out the home manufactures of the
      peasant, to buy corn, etc. The power of money not only crushed the
      peasantry, but split it up. An enormous number of peasants were steadily
      ruined
      and turned into proletarians; from the minority arose a small group of
      grasping kulaks and enterprising muzhiks who laid hands upon the peasant
      farms and the peasants’ lands, and who formed the kernel of the rising
      rural bourgeoisie. The forty years since the Reform have been marked by
      this constant process of “de-peasantising” the peasants, a
      process of slow and painful extinction. The peasant was reduced to
      beggary. He lived together with his cattle, was clothed in rags, and fared
      on weeds; he fled from his allotment, if he had anywhere to go, and evenpaidto be relieved of it, if he could induce anyone to take over
      a plot of land, the payments on which exceeded the income it yielded. The
      peasants were in a state of chronic starvation, and they died by the tens
      of thousands from famine and epidemics in bad harvest years, which
      recurred with increasing frequency.

Thisis the state of our countryside even at the present time. One might
      ask: What is the way out, by what means can the lot of the peasantry be
      improved? The small peasantry can free itself from the yoke of capital
      only by associating itself with the working-class movement, by helping the
      workers in their struggle for the socialist system, for transforming the
      land, as well as the other means of production (factories, works,
      machines, etc.), into social property. Trying to save the peasantry by
      protecting small-scale farming and small holdings from the onslaught of
      capitalism would be a useless retarding of social development; it would
      mean deceiving the peasantry with illusions of the possibility of
      prosperity even under capitalism,it would mean disuniting the labouring classes and creating a privileged
      position for the minority at the expense of the majority. That is why
      Social-Democrats will always struggle against senseless and vicious
      institutions such as that which forbids the peasant to dispose of his
      land, such as collective liability, or the system of prohibiting the
      peasants from freely leaving the village commune or freely accepting into
      it persons belonging to any social-estate. But, as we have seen, our
      peasants are suffering not only and not so much from oppression by capital
      as from oppression by the land lords and the survivals of
      serfdom. Ruthless struggle against these shackles, which immeasurably
      worsen the condition of the peasantry and tie it hand and foot, is not
      only possible but even necessary in the interest of the country’s social
      development in general; for the hopeless poverty, ignorance, lack of
      rights, and degradation, from which the peasants suffer, lay an imprint of
      Asiatic backwardness upon the entire social system of our
      country. Social-Democracy would not be doing its duty if it did not render
      every assistance to this struggle. This assistance should take the form,
      briefly put, ofcarrying the class struggle into the countryside.

Wehave seen that in the modern Russian village two kinds of class
      antagonism exist side by side: first, the antagonism between the
      agricultural workers and the proprietors, and, secondly, the antagonism
      between the peasantry as a whole and the landlord class as a whole. The
      first antagonism is developing and becoming more acute; the second is
      gradually diminishing. The first is still wholly in the future; the second
      to a considerable degree already belongs to the past. And yet, despite
      this, it is the second antagonism that has the most vital and most
      practical significance for Russian Social-Democrats at the present
      time. It goes without saying, it is an axiom for every Social-Democrat,
      that we must utilise all the opportunities presenting themselves to us to
      develop the class-consciousness of the agricultural wage-workers, that we
      must pay attention to the migration of urban workers to the countryside
      (e.g., mechanics employed on steam threshing machines, etc.) and to the
      markets where agricultural labourers are hired.

Butour rural labourers are still too closely connected with the
      peasantry, they are still too heavily burdened with the misfortunes of the
      peasantry as a whole to enable the movement of the rural workers to assume
      national significance, either now or in the immediate future. On the other
      hand, the question of sweeping away the survivals of serfdom, of driving
      the spirit of social-estate inequality and degradation of tens of millions
      of the “common people” out of the whole of the Russian state
      system is already a matter of national significance, and the Party which
      claims to be the vanguard in the fight for freedom cannot ignore it.

Thedeplorable condition of the peasantry has now be come (in a more or
      less general form) almost universally recognised. The phrase about
      “the defects” of the Reform of 1861 and the need for state aid
      has become a current truism. It is our duty to point out that peasant
      distress arises precisely from the class oppression of the peasantry; that
      the government is the loyal champion of the oppressing classes; and that
      those who sincerely and seriously desire a radical improvement in the
      condition of the peasantry must seek, not aid from the government, but
      deliverance from its oppression and the achievement of political
      liberty. There is talk of the redemption payments being excessively high,
      and of benevolent measures on the part of the government to reduce them
      and extend the dates of payment. Our reply to this is: all payment of
      redemption money is nothing more nor less than robbery of the peasantry by
      the landlords and the government, screened by legal forms and bureaucratic
      phrases; it is nothing more nor less than tribute paid to the serf-owners
      for emancipating their slaves. We will put forward the demand for the
      immediate and complete abolition of redemption payments and quit-rents,
      and the demand for the return to the people of the hundreds of millions
      which the tsarist government has extorted from them in the course of the
      years to satisfy the greed of the slaveowners. There is talk of the
      peasants not having sufficient land, of the need for state aid to provide
      them with more land. Our reply to this is: it is preciselybecause
      ofstate aid (aid to the landlords, of course) that the peasants in
      such an enormous number of cases were deprived of land they vitally
      needed. We put forward the demand for restitution to the

      peasants of the land of which they have been deprived, a condition that
      still binds them to forced labour, to the rendering of corvée
      service, i.e., that virtually keeps them in a state of serfdom. We will
      put forward the demand for the establishment of peasant committees to
      remove the crying injustices perpetrated against the emancipated slaves by
      the Committees of Nobles set up by the tsarist government. We will demand
      the establishment of courts empowered to reduce the excessively high
      payment for land extorted from the peasants by the landlords who take
      advantage of their hopeless position, courts in which the peasants could
      prosecute for usury all who take advantage of their extreme need to impose
      shackling agreements upon them. We will utilise every opportunity to
      explain to the peasants that the people who talk to them about the
      tutelage or aid of the present state are either fools or charlatans, and
      are their worst enemies; that what the peasants stand most in need of is
      relief from the monstrous oppression of the bureaucratic power,
      recognition of their complete and absolute equality in all respects with
      all other social-estates, complete freedom of movement from place to
      place, freedom to dispose of their lands, and freedom to manage their own
      communal affairs and dispose of the communal revenues. The most common
      facts in the life of any Russian village provide a thousand issues for
      agitation in behalf of the above demands. This agitation must be based
      upon the local, concrete, and most pressing needs of the peasantry; yet it
      must not be confined to these needs, but must be steadily directed towards
      widening the outlook of the peasants, towards developing their political
      consciousness. The peasants must be brought to understand the special
      positions occupied in the state by the landlords and the peasants
      respectively, and they must be taught that the only way to free the
      countryside from tyrannical oppression is to convene an assembly of
      representatives of the people and to overthrow the arbitrary rule of the
      officials. It is absurd to assert that the demand for political liberty
      would not be understood by the workers; not only the workers who have
      engaged the factory owners and the police in direct battle for years and
      who constantly see their best fighters subjected to arbitrary arrests and
      persecution—notonly these workers, who are already imbued with socialism, but every
      sensible peasant who thinks at all about the things he sees going on
      around him will understand what the workers are fighting for, will
      understand the significance of a Zemsky Sobor which will emancipate the
      whole country from the unlimited power of the hated officials. Agitation
      on the basis of the direct and most urgent needs of the peasants will
      fulfil its purpose—i.e., carry the class struggle into the
      countryside—only when it succeeds in combining every exposure of
      some “economic” evil with definite political demands.

Butthe question arises whether the Social-Democratic Labour Party can
      include in its programme demands like those referred to above. Can it
      undertake to carry on agitation among the peasantry? Will it not lead to
      the scattering and diversion of our revolutionary forces, not very
      numerous as it is, from the principal and only reliable channel of the
      movement?

Suchobjections are based on a misunderstanding. We must definitely
      include in our programme demands for the emancipation of our countryside
      from all the survivals of slavery, demands capable of rousing the best
      section of the peasantry, if not to engage in independent political
      action, then at all events consciously to support the working-class
      struggle for emancipation. We should be making a mistake if we defended
      measures that would have the effect of retarding social development or of
      artificially shielding the small peasantry against the growth of
      capitalism, against the development of large-scale production; but we
      should be committing a much more disastrous mistake if we failed to
      utilise the working-class movement for the purpose of spreading among the
      peasantry the democratic demands of which the Reform of February 19, 1861,
      fell short because of its distortion by the landlords and the
      officials. Our Party must include such demands in its programme if it is to
      take the lead of the whole people in the struggle against the

      autocracy.[1]But the inclusion of these points does not mean that we would call active
      revolutionary forces from the towns to the villages. Such a thing is out
      of the question. There can be no doubt that all the militant elements of
      the Party must concentrate on work in the towns and industrial centres;
      that only the industrial proletariat is capable of conducting a steadfast
      and mass struggle against the autocracy, of employing such methods of
      struggle as organising public demonstrations, or of issuing apopularpolitical newspaper regularly and circulating it
      widely. We must include peasant demands in our programme, not in order to
      call convinced Social-Democrats from the towns to the countryside, not in
      order to chain them to the village, but to guide the activities of those
      forces thatcannotfind an outlet anywhere except in the rural
      localities and to utilise for the cause of democracy, for the political
      struggle for freedom, the ties which, owing to the force of circumstances,
      a good many faithful Social-Democratic intellectuals and workers have with
      the countryside—ties that are necessarily increasing and growing
      stronger with the growth of the movement. We have long passed the stage
      when we were a small detachment of volunteers, when the reserves of
      Social-Democratic forces were limited to circles of young people who all
      “went to the workers.” Our movement now has a whole army at its
      command, an army of workers, engaged in the struggle for socialism and
      freedom—an army of intellectuals who have been taking part in the
      movement and who can now be found over the whole length and breadth of
      Russia—an army of sympathisers whose eyes are turned with faith and
      hope towards the working-class movement and who are prepared to render it
      a thousand services. We are confronted with the great task of organising
      all these armies in such a manner as will enable us, not only to organise
      transient outbreaks, not only to strike casual and sporadic (and therefore
      not dangerous) blows at the enemy, but to pursue the enemy steadily
      and persistently, in a determined struggle all along the line, to harass
      the autocratic government wherever it sows oppression and gathers a
      harvest of hatred. Can this aim be achieved without sowing the seeds of
      the class struggle and political consciousness among the many millions of
      the peasantry? Let no one say it is impossibleto sow these seeds! It is not only possible, it is already being done in a
      thousand ways that escape our attention and influence. This process will
      evolve much more widely and rapidly when we issue a slogan that will bring
      our influence to bear and when we unfurl the banner of the emancipation of
      the Russian peasantry from all the survivals of shameful serfdom. Country
      people coming to the towns even today regard with curiosity and interest
      the workers’ struggle, incomprehensible to them, and carry news of it to
      the remotest parts of the land. We can and must bring about a situation in
      which the curiosity of the bystanders is replaced, if not by full
      understanding, then at least by a vague consciousness that the workers are
      struggling for the interests of the whole people, by a growing sympathy
      for their struggle. And when that has been done, the day of the victory of
      the revolutionary workers’ party over the police government will come with
      a rapidity exceeding our own anticipation.

[1]We have drafted a Social-Democratic programme which includes the
      above-mentioned demands. We hope—after this draft has been discussed and
      amended with the participation of the Emancipation of Labour group—to
      publish it as the draft programme of our Party in one of our forthcoming
      issues.
    —Lenin

[2]The article, “The Workers’ Party and the Peasantry,” was
	written in connection with the elaboration of the agrarian programme of
	the R.S.D.L.P., published in the name of the Editorial Board ofIskraandZaryain the summer of 1902 and adopted by
	the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1903.

[3]A quarter or beggar’s allotment—a quarter of the so-called
      “maximum” or “decree” allotment, the amount
      established by law for a given district at the time of the Reform of
      1861. Some of the peasants received these tiny parcels of land from the
      landlords wit out payment of redemption money. Such allotments were,
      therefore, also called “gift allotments” and the peasants who
      received them were called “gift peasants.”

[4]Temporarily bound peasants—peasants who were still
      compelled to carry out certain duties (payment of quit-rent or performance
      of corvée service) for the use of their land even after the Reform and
      until they started paying redemption money to the landlord for their
      allotment.

Fromthe moment the redemption contract was concluded, the peasants ceased
      to be “temporarily bound” and joined the category of
      “peasant property-owners.”

[5]Thesetitle-deedswere documents defining the land-owning
      relations of temporarily bound peasants and landlords upon the abolition
      of serfdom in 1861. The title-deed indicated the amount of land used by
      the peasant before the Reform and the land and other properties that
      remained in his hands after “emancipation”; the deed also listed the
      duties the peasant had to perform for the land lord. The amount of
      redemption money to be paid by the peasant was determined on the basis of
      this title-deed.